M. David StoneEpson BrightLink 455Wi The Epson BrightLink 455Wi is almost identical to the Editors' Choice 450Wi, but adds the ability to work facing straight down, to let you create an interactive table top.

Ultra short throw. Can use any solid surface, including a tabletop or floor, as an interactive screen.

Cons

Needs calibration. Doesn't handle video as well as it handles data images. Pen needs to touch the screen.

Bottom Line

The Epson BrightLink 455Wi is almost identical to the Editors' Choice 450Wi, but adds the ability to work facing straight down, to let you create an interactive table top.

Whatever the strengths of the Epson BrightLink 455Wi ($2,200 street), it stands as a reminder of how quickly perspectives can change. When I reviewed the Epson BrightLink 450Wi ($2,200 street, 4.5 stars) last year, it was unique in combining interactivity with an ultra short throwthe ability to show a big image from just a few inches. The combination helped made it Editors' Choice. Today, competing ultra short throw interactive models, like the Dell S500wi ($1,599 direct, 4.0 stars), give the 455Wi stiffer competition than 450Wi had, and they keep it from being quite as impressive.

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The 455Wi is nearly identical to the Epson 450Wi in most ways, with a WXGA (1,280 by 800) LCD-based engine, a 2,500 lumen rating, and even the same size and weight, at 6.1 by 14.5 by 19.0 inches (HWD) and 14.1 pounds with the slide plate for mounting. It also has the same lensing system, with a stated range for distance from the screen of 2.7 to 14.5 inches and image sizes of 59 to 96 inches diagonally, or 50 to 81.4 inches wide at WXGA resolution.

The one important difference in the 455Wi is a new cooling mode, which lets you mount the projector facing straight down to turn a tabletop (or floor) into an interactive surface. Note that cooling systems typically depend on the fact that hot air rises and cool air falls. If you simply point a projector straight down, the directions for up and down change in relation to the fan and vents, and you can run the risk of overheating the lamp and shortening its life. Given the $169 (street) cost per lamp, replacing them can get expensive.

Even with the new cooling mode, mounting the projector to point straight down shortens the rated lamp life from 2,500 hours to 2,000 hours. But without the new cooling system, lamp life would be shorter still.

The Basics
One of the attractions of the 450Wi was that it came with literally everything you needed, including two interactive pens (in the U.S. and Canada at least), a driver for using the pens, an annotation program for interactive drawing on the image, and even a wall mount. The 455Wi comes with all the same pieces. If you plan to use it in tabletop mode, however, you'll have to buy the table mount separately. (Epson expects that the mount will be available directly from Epson's Web site for $189 or less by the time this is published, or shortly after. The actual price has not been determined at this writing.) Epson also offers a ceiling mount ($99.99 direct) for those who need it.

Aside from getting the projector in the mount, setup is standard. Connection choices include two VGA ports that can double as component video ports, an S-Video port, and an RCA phone plug composite video port. Each of these is paired with its own stereo audio port so when you change the image source, you automatically change the audio source as well. The projector uses a miniplug audio port for each of the VGA ports and two RCA phono plugs shared by the composite video and S-Video ports. Other key connectors include a USB port to let you connect to a computer to use the interactive feature, a microphone input, a pass-through monitor connector, and a miniplug stereo audio output.

Brightness and Image Quality
The 455Wi's 2,500 lumen rating is a little on the low side by today's standards. The rating for the Dell S500wi, for example, is 3,200 lumens, and the Editors' Choice Optoma TW610ST ($1,000 street, 4.0 stars) is 3,100 lumens. As a practical matter, however, the projector is bright enough to stand up to typical ambient light in a conference room or classroom at its maximum 96-inch diagonal image size.

More important, the projector did a good job on our data image tests, running through our standard suite of DisplayMate screens without any serious problems. Colors were vibrant, both black on white and white on black text were easily readable down to the smallest sizes we test with, and the image was sharply focused over the entire screen, which can sometimes be a problem for ultra short throw projectors.

Video image quality doesn't earn the same high praise, but is good enough to be usable. I saw some loss of shadow detail (detail in dark areas), but only in clips chosen because many projectors have problems handling them well. Colors showed a dulled down look typical of low contrast, but that's standard with data projectors. I didn't see any other issues worth mention.

Audio and Interactivity
One other small improvement in the 455Wi is a more powerful audio system, with a 12-watt mono speaker. Like the 10-watt speaker in the 450Wi, it offers reasonably good sound quality and is loud enough for a small to midsize conference room or classroom. If you want to take advantage of stereo or want enough volume to fill a larger room, however, you'll need an external sound system.

There are some issues about Epson's approach to interactivity that you need to be aware of. The 455Wi uses a pen that broadcasts its position to the projector when you touch the pen's nib to the screen. The nib is actually a little switch that turns on the IR signal in the pen, which the projector's IR camera can see.

This stands in sharp contrast to the approach in the S500Wi and a growing number of other DLP projectors that use the Texas Instruments approach to interactivity. With TI's approach (which projects a grid on the screen that the pen can see but the human eye can't), the pen only has to see the screen to be able to tell the projector where it's pointing.

The practical difference between these approaches is significant. With TI's approach, you don't need to touch the screen, and you can using anything for a screen, including a rough surface like cinderblock that might eventually wear out a nib, a newly painted surface that the nib might damage, or a sheet of material hanging from a mount on top, without a solid backing.

With the 455Wi's approach, you have to touch the screen and it has to be solid enough to push against the switch in the nib to activate it. In addition, when you set the projector up or change resolution, you have to calibrate the pen and projector by touching 25 points on the screensomething you never have to do with TI's approach. These differences are all solidly in favor of the TI approach, but may or may not be an issue in any given situation.

If you want to use a hanging screen with no backing, say, or regularly move the projector or change resolution, they argue against the Epson projector. On the other hand, with TI's approach, the projector brightness drops when you turn on interactive mode, which doesn't happen with the 455Wi. If you plan to use a solid wall in any case and don't expect to change resolution or projector position, the disadvantages in the Epson approach won't matter very much. In that case, you may well be better off with the Epson BrightLink 455Wi, particularly if you want to use it in tabletop mode, which may not be an option with another projector.

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About the Author

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, moni... See Full Bio

Epson BrightLink 455Wi

Epson BrightLink 455Wi

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